Chapter 5
Ella
The man in the night doesn’t come back. I wait for him, sleepless, for several evenings until I eventually pass out.
Like every other man, he got what he wanted and bounced, I guess. I know it’s absolutely crazy to feel hurt that the guy who broke into my apartment to fuck me didn’t catch feelings in the process, but being rational isn’t always the easiest when the sex is that fucking good.
I can still hear his voice, and feel his hands on my body. When I am trying to focus on other things, it rings in my ear. Sometimes, I get the sense I am being watched, but when I look around there is either nobody there at all, or a crowd that I can’t pick anybody out of.
A week goes by and I start to relax, I guess. A lot of things have gone wrong lately. There’s been sadness and darkness, and it’s starting to become swallowed up by the force of normality.
It’s a Thursday. Early evening. It’s been a very long day. My boss is an asshole, I’m late for a rare evening spin class, and I’m pretty sure my rent didn’t go out of my account because the payment bounced. My head has been all over the show lately. I can’t concentrate on anything.
I keep telling myself that I am going to get over it soon. I loved him, or thought I did, but the internet tells me I barely knew him, and real love is about time and effort. A dozen reels appearing on my social media feeds tell me what I was experiencing was limerence. Maybe it was.
Sometimes telling myself I didn’t properly know him and couldn’t have loved him makes me feel better.
Other times I know it doesn’t matter what anybody says about how long it takes to fall in love because I know how I felt when I was with him, and I know how it feels to face the fact I am never going to be with him again.
Getting home to my building, I run upstairs as fast as I can, taking the external stairwell and avoiding the elevator.
When I moved into this place I was so excited that there was an elevator, but it almost never works, and when it does it has a tendency to get stuck.
It happens so much there’s a phone tree taped to the inside so one of us can go out with a crowbar and wedge the doors open for one of our neighbors if need be.
I sweat my way up five flights of stairs, cursing my decision to get an apartment so high up. It’s top floor, which at the time made me feel fancy, but now I just have aching thighs after all that working out.
I push the door to my apartment open and throw my bag down by the door.
“Fuck,” I curse as I trip over my bag immediately.
The door closes behind me slowly.
The hair rises on the back of my neck as it occurs to me that my door was unlocked when I got here, and someone just closed the door too.
I turn around to see a man standing in my apartment.
He makes my cozy little home look like a hovel.
He is tall, well over six feet. He has dark hair with a slight wave, and the most elegant yet masculine features I have ever seen on a man.
He is wearing a cream suit that suits his olive skin.
It looks expensive. He’s wearing a watch, which also looks expensive.
He doesn’t belong here. He must be at least in his mid-thirties. I’m twenty-two. Guys his age hit on me at bars sometimes, but not men with his obvious financial advantages. I stare at him in a kind of shock. He’s so gorgeous. What the hell is he doing here?
Something in my bedroom falls over. I hear a thud and then a shuffling of feet.
“She has so much crap in here!” a male voice curses, annoyed.
“What is going on?” The annoyance at realizing my personal space is being well and truly torn apart prompts the question.
There’s something familiar about this man. Something… like I know him? But I have definitely never been in his presence before, that’s for absolute certain.
He smirks at me, but his eyes narrow just a fraction like he registered my sass and didn’t entirely appreciate it. I feel a pang in my stomach, like I am in trouble because I’ve done something wrong.
Another man comes storming out of the bedroom. “I didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean… Oh, she’s here.” His tone suggests I am late as well.
This guy is beautiful too. Is there a male model convention in my apartment that I didn’t know about? He has similar skin, a little lighter. His eyes are blue and his features are bolder than the first man who is leaning up against my bookcase.
I look back at the first guy because he seems to be in charge.
He has deep brown soulful eyes and a restrained demeanor.
I know instantly that he is the leader of whatever is going on here, and maybe of much more.
He looks at me with a softly penetrating stare that is more frightening than the curt annoyance of the blond.
“Take a seat,” the tall, dark-haired man says, pressing the lock on my door as he steps toward me, ushering me toward my pink armchair that I found on the side of the street and pushed into the elevator on a day when that was working.
“This is my place,” I say weakly. I’ve never practiced telling strange hot men to get out of my house, and it seems like I’m not about to start now. These two are so captivating I find myself just staring rather than defending.
The leader puts his hands in his pockets and speaks to me in a clear, somewhat patient tone.
“Did you have anything to do with the passing of Theodore Levin?”
“No,” I say. “Of course not. I’ve never had anything to do with anyone’s passing.”
He looks through me. I swear to god he sees the inside of me, parts and places that are usually obscured to everyone including me.
“You have secrets,” he says softly. Everything about this man could be mistaken for gentleness, but that is precisely what it would be—a mistake. Every time he pushes into me, he shows me something of what he is. I feel coldness. I feel cruelty. I feel a capacity for dizzying violence.
But right now he is wearing a cream suit and giving me a faint smile that sits on just the wrong side of reassuring.
“Everyone has secrets. Mine aren’t murder,” I say, shivering against cold that isn’t there. “Please let me go. I swear I don’t know anything about this.”
“You knew Theodore.”
“I really don’t think I did.”
“Teddy.”
“Oh.” God, have I turned stupid? Or has this man just managed to obliterate every bit of sense from my brain just by looking at me?
“Oh,” he says smoothly.
“I knew Teddy. Sure. Everyone knows Teddy.” I swap back and forth between present and past tense because it is unthinkable to me that someone as lively as Teddy could possibly be gone. “They said it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” he says.
“I… I don’t know anything about it,” I stammer. “Are you a detective?” I ask the question because I suddenly realize that this might be a criminal investigation. He was just in my house. He let himself in. Maybe he’s a policeman. Maybe I’m about to be arrested.
I feel a cool chill run through me at the idea of this man sliding cuffs on my body.
“He loved you.”
“He did?” I am conditioned to lie, so I lie. “We didn’t really even date. We went out a couple times.”
Those brown eyes turn almost red in the flickering of the light. I know that there’s nothing supernatural about him. He’s just a man. But he doesn’t feel like one. He feels like someone with a lot of power.
I think police have to identify themselves though.
“Am I in trouble?”
He cocks his head to the side and his lips quirk a little. He finds me amusing in some way, but I don’t think it’s a good thing. I don’t think this man is someone whose attention I want.
His eyes flicker from me to the other man. He makes a little motion with his head. A tilt, nothing more. The other guy leaves, shutting my apartment door quietly behind him.
The atmosphere in the room shifts. It doesn’t feel like my place anymore. It’s his, somehow. The painting on the wall behind him is the one I did at a sip and spill event a month ago, but it’s his painting now. Every brushstroke. Every line. Everything in this place is his. Including me.
I shake my head as the sense of disorientation grows.
“Look at me,” he says, his words soft, but firm.
I do as I am told. I didn’t have to actually be told. I would look at him if he was in a room of a thousand other people. This man is the definition of magnetic. He has a charm and an authority that will not be denied. And he has Teddy’s eyes.
They are a different color, and they sit in a face with different features, but that, I think, is the reason for my uncanny reaction.
Teddy never used them this way. His danced with laughter, or sometimes brimmed with exuberance, but this man uses that same gaze to house a very different soul.
I feel myself bracing against the chair, almost like he is the big bad wolf, and I might find myself blown away. I am used to strong men thinking I am prey. It comes with the territory of being a woman. They never think you are anything besides something to consume.
This man is inherently no different.
He might be worse than most.
“I want you to be as honest with me as you can,” he says. “It’s important.”
“You’re Teddy’s brother,” I say.
“You know who I am?”
“I know his eyes.”
He blinks and his head jerks back slightly. He didn’t expect to be seen so clearly, or so soon. He was hoping I’d mistake him for a detective.
“I’m Aiden Levin,” he says.
That name probably means something in his world. I bet that sends shivers down venture capitalists’ spines. He’s got that rich guy air that explains why he felt comfortable just coming to where I live and letting himself in.
“And you broke into my apartment. I’m going to call the police.”
His eyes narrow at me just a fraction. “That won’t do you any good, but you’re welcome to do so if you feel it’s necessary.”
I take out my phone, still keeping eye contact with him.
“Why did you come to my house?”
“You know why I am here. You were connected to Teddy. He’s dead. We need to know why.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, feeling how shallow those words are, especially in an interaction with someone as intense as this.
He inclines his head slightly, acknowledging the words.
“Thank you.”
Aiden
I know Leo has been coming here. When I ask him where he has been, it’s not to get information. I always know an answer before I ask a question. This girl has consumed the attention of two of my brothers now. Whether she was connected to Teddy’s death or not, I had to meet her myself.
The girl is pretty. She has a kind of fragility to her that is greatly appealing. Her place is small, neat, clean. Except for the bedroom. That is an unholy mess.
She is curvy, she is short. She has tattoos, though most of them are hidden under her corporate gym attire.
She likes to present a facade to the world of competence and conservatism that is being belied by the purple streak in her hair.
Interesting, though also adaptive and hardly grounds for judgment.
Her dark hair was tied up behind her head, but strands of it are coming undone, just like the rest of her.
So. She is sweet, cute, a little pedestrian in her tastes, apparently non-threatening…
She’s also a liar.
I can see it written all over her face when she looks at me. There is guilt stamped in the very center of each of her eyes.
I can’t be certain what she is lying about, but I know she’s not telling the truth.
She is looking at me with an expression I am familiar with, having essentially raised three brothers. She knows she should be in trouble; she just doesn’t want to say for what.
I’ve not dealt with a lot of women in this context.
Usually, if I am dating a woman, there is a protocol and a set of behaviors we will engage in.
A mating dance, really. There’s the invitation, the dinner, the dancing, the bedding, the inevitable farewell when they realize my intensity carries through to every area of my life and they realize they could never withstand it.
I crouch down in front of her, borrowing a technique I learned when my youngest brothers were small.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I ask the question softly. “Something you would feel unburdened by if you just told me?”
She shakes her head and practically whispers her response.
“No.”
I reach out and tip her chin up. She has started to hide her eyes. They all do that when they are feeling guilty and know they should have behaved better.
She looks at me reluctantly. I cock my head to the side as I search her gaze.
“It’s a relief to confess,” I tell her.
“And what would you do if I did?”
Oh, she’s guilty. Of something. My pulse spikes for a moment as that fact registers inside me. Leo told me she was a red herring, a nosy little goth girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I don’t think so.
I could take her now. I could imprison her in my home and have my way with her and break her down until she told me everything I wanted to know and a great many things I did not.
But something tells me to leave her loose, to watch her. If she’s up to something, I will find out more from observation than from confession. This girl did not hurt Teddy, but I think she knows who did.
I smile, breaking the spell, and I stand up and back, releasing the pressure. It’s a technique used for training horses, but it works on people just as well.
She looks surprised, and even more nervous now. She looks up at me, practically quivering with fear. She is a rabbit waiting to be devoured, but now is not the time to eat.
“I’ll leave my card,” I tell her. “If you think of anything.”
I slide my card onto the kitchen counter, nod, and leave. It’s an abrupt departure, and it is intended to be. I want her off balance. I want her to feel like I saw something in her, that perhaps in some way she’s already been found out.
I want to see what she does next.